


Link by Link

by the_dala



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Adaptation, Angst, Crossover, F/M, First Kiss, Ghosts, Holidays, M/M, Team as Family, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 05:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1102783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_dala/pseuds/the_dala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Kirk is visited by three ghosts while he's in a coma. </p><p>(A loose adaptation of Dickens' <i>A Christmas Carol</i>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Link by Link

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Space Wrapped 2013.

 

Jim was dead, to begin with. There was no doubt whatsoever about that. He remembered locking the door to the warp core chamber. He remembered the pain as the radiation began to flood his nerves. He remembered the fog of unconsciousness creeping across his field of vision, and the grief in Spock's dark eyes, and the sound of his voice calling Jim his friend. That was the last thing Jim knew, and as final moments went, it could have been worse.

The next thing he knew, he was in his old dorm room at the Academy watching a tall blond man fiddle with the computer.

“What the hell?”

The man straightened up and smiled at him. A chill ran down Jim’s spine (did he still have a spine?) because he knew that handsome, open face.

“Hi, Jimmy,” said George Kirk.

Jim was struck by how very young he looked. He could pass for a first-year recruit with no trouble; he certainly didn’t look old enough to have gotten married and produced a child and piloted a starship to his doom.

“But you’re dead,” he said, blinking.

“As a doornail,” George replied cheerfully. He leaned back against the desk and cocked his head in thought. "You know, I’ve never really understood that expression.”

“I’m dead, too.” Jim glanced down at himself. He was dressed in his regulation black shirt and pants but no gold command tunic, and he couldn’t feel any of the bruises and scrapes he had acquired on that long hunt. “Aren’t I?”

“Well, that’s a bit more complicated,” George said, rubbing the back of his neck. Before Jim could ask him to clarify, the door slid open and a younger, harried-looking Jim Kirk strode right through him.

Jim sucked in a breath and spread his hands over his stomach.

“Oh, he can’t see you,” George assured him, watching as the other Jim bent over his monitor. “Or feel you, or hear you. You’re just a ghost to him - or to yourself, I guess.” He waved a hand like the details didn’t matter, the overhead light glinting off his wedding band.

Jim felt very much that they should matter, but his protest was stymied by a muttered curse from his counterpart. _The real me? Or am I real and he’s only a memory? Spock would find this fascinating._

He glanced over his own shoulder at the message, just catching the sender’s name before it was deleted with an emphatic stab of a fingertip. Jim snorted.

“I remember now. This is my first year, in December, and that was Admiral Nogura asking me yet again to participate in all the memorial crap.”

George nodded, not appearing bothered by either Jim’s dismissive attitude toward the events that were, after all, held in his honor. Jim had always been able to go to ground at the end of previous years, but not this one - everyone was suddenly very interested in the fact that George and Winona Kirk’s misfit son with his minor criminal record had enlisted in Starfleet. While Pike had done what he could to field the interstellar news agencies, Starfleet’s PR department was itself part of the problem.

The man at the desk - the boy, really, not that he’d thought of himself as such at the time - turned his head and Jim found himself staring directly into his own eyes. They were shadowed with anger and an old bitterness, but after a moment young Jim’s face lit up. Jim remembered why even as he spun around to see Bones enter the room.

In Jim’s memory he would have placed Bones in jeans and a t-shirt, but he was still in his reds with a large duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Jim took an involuntary step back - it was a lot harder to believe that this Bones couldn’t see him, which was probably the guilt talking.

“C’mon, Jim,” Bones said gruffly, pulling a leather jacket off the back of the door and tossing it at him.

“Where’re we going?”

“Safe house,” Jim replied as if they could hear him, while Bones rolled his eyes and said, “The walls have ears, kid. You want this whole place followin’ us out of town?”

Young Jim shot up from his chair at that thought, making Jim do a side-shuffle to avoid another collision and prompting a chuckle from George.

They skipped the transportation entirely, though maybe that was because Jim remembered the house so much more vividly. It was a little white clapboard house two hundred yards from the beach, almost entirely hidden by dunes.

“He never did give you a straight answer about who it belonged to or how he managed to borrow it,” George mused as they watched the bickering and unpacking proceed in a comfortable kind of rhythm

“No, he didn’t,” Jim said. His chest tightened as he watched himself reach out to be handed a bottle of liquor without even glancing up at Bones. He hadn’t forgotten this, precisely, but they weren’t living in such close quarters these days. It was something else to see it from the outside. “He left Georgia early to come get me, too. Claimed it was no big deal, but -”

He paused because that conversation was happening right before them, Bones shaking his head and saying he got to see Joanna unwrap her presents and that she wasn’t old enough to stay up until midnight, anyway.

“And you think you can, old man?”

Bones pulled the foil off the takeout they’d picked up on the way, rolled it into a ball, and chucked it at Jim’s head. It rebounded in George’s direction and he ducked.

“Instinct,” he said sheepishly off of Jim’s raised eyebrow. Jim fought a grin. Turned out his hero father was a bit of a dork.

It was strange what he remembered - the first movie they watched, the kung pao shrimp, the shirt he changed into - and what he didn’t - the brand of beer they drank, the third movie, the way Bones kept glancing at him whenever he took a sip. That Jim on the worn sofa was watching the screen a little too intently. He remembered that, too.

“The cushions were all lumpy. We kept sliding toward the middle.”

“Uh-huh,” George said, his voice perfectly bland. “Cushions.”

Jim stayed with Bones when his younger self got up to take a piss, catching how he raked a hand through his hair and scowled at the vapid commentators as they killed time - or was it at his own reflection?

Young Jim sat a little closer when he returned from the bathroom, and Jim’s stomach twisted in sympathetic knots because he knew what was coming. Or more accurately, what wasn’t.

“I wanted to kiss him,” he murmured, not letting himself turn away as Bones looked over and a corner of his mouth lifted. He looked impossibly young, too, for all that this was only a few years ago.

The Jim on the couch did look away - pulled away, in fact, just as the time display struck midnight. He had missed the shadowplay of hope and disappointment on Bones’ face. Jim didn’t want to see it now any more than he had then, but he thought he owed it to Bones.

“Why didn’t I kiss him?”

“Because you were afraid,” George said quietly.

They walked outside together, climbed a dune as the lights in the little house winked out, first in the bedroom and then in the living room where Jim had crashed on the couch, alone. He turned away to look at the black sea.

“There’s so much I want to ask you,” Jim said, “but I don’t...is any of this even real?”

George graced him with a crooked smile. “Does it matter?”

One hand hovered at his hip and for a moment Jim feared they were going to share an awkward handshake, but George finally pulled him into a hug. His arms were solid and warm and Jim decided that no, it didn’t matter.

"I heard you, when you were born, and I'm so glad I finally got to see you,” George said into Jim’s ear.

A light flashed out on the water, catching Jim’s attention, and when he turned back George was gone. In his place stood Christopher Pike.

“Captain -” Jim said, the words catching in his throat. He’d wondered about his father for his whole life, but it was an old wound nearly healed over. This one was still too close, too raw. The tears that had threatened when he’d hugged his father tight now spilled over. He swiped his palm across his face.

The laugh lines at the corners of Pike’s blue eyes deepened. He grasped Jim’s forearm as if to steady him - and Jim needed it, because they were suddenly bathed in light. He blinked spots out of his eyes and looked around. It was a floodlight, aimed from high above their heads over a massive pile of broken machinery.

“My poor girl,” said Pike with a sigh, and Jim realized like a kick in the gut that they were standing amid the wreckage of the _Enterprise_.

“We’re in spacedock?” It was a shock seeing her systems powered down, gone dark. But no, there was a light over in the corner, blinking red -

“Oh bollocks, I _just_ fixed you,” Montgomery Scott exclaimed over the console. He smacked it on the side and the red light flickered, then turned blue and held steady. Jim couldn’t hold back a laugh at Scotty’s self-satisfied expression.

He walked over, Pike at his heels, to observe some complicated maneuvers with a spanner. Winona Kirk was an excellent pianist - she hadn’t played much when Jim was a kid, but every now and then she could be persuaded to sit down at her grandfather’s antique Baldwin for a song or two. He had loved to perch beside her on the bench and watch her long fingers play over the keys. Watching his chief engineer work was quite similar.

“I’m sorry,” he told Scotty, who gave no indication that he heard. His tongue was pinched between his teeth, the tip sticking out. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. “I should have listened to you from the beginning.

Pike’s fingertips ghosted over a tangled bunch of wires just before Scotty reached for them. “That’s one of the hardest things to learn as a commander. Whether their advice is good or bad, you take it on yourself.”

They left Scotty then, though Jim wasn’t entirely sure how. One moment he was standing on the cracked deck and the next he was outside in the dark once more. It was the track at the Academy, only half its lights lit at this hour. Jim and Pike were standing beneath them watching a figure approach out of the shadows. He was running so swiftly that he’d actually passed them before Jim realized it was Pavel Chekov.

“Kid’s fast,” Pike remarked as Chekov shot by them.

Jim watched him run back into the dark end of the track. “He won the Starfleet marathon twice. Youngest ever.”

“What’s he run, a 4:15, 4:20 mile?”

Jim nodded, though it looked to him like Chekov might be beating that time. They ran together sometimes, on the treadmills or through the hallways during ship’s night. Jim never nursed any hope of catching him, of course, but it kept him sharp.

Chekov made another lap before coming to an abrupt halt. Kirk winced as he bent over, clutching his knees and looking queasy, but he fought it off and forced himself into a cooldown, turning across the turf in the middle of the track. His shoes were damp when he came back to the bench for his water bottle.

Pike touched Jim’s elbow.

“Let’s go. I have a feeling he’ll be out here awhile.”

They didn’t linger long at the Sulu house in downtown San Francisco. It was a noisy, lively affair - Hikaru’s mother had made a pot roast and his three sisters were there, a handful of nieces and nephews getting underfoot while the adults cleaned up the dishes. Jim felt a familiar twinge of envy for the sort of family gathering he’d never experienced growing up. He looked for Sulu and was surprised to find him detached from the rest of his family, sitting out on the front porch and staring out at the street. He was drinking something colored light pink with the barest splash of cranberry juice. Jim couldn’t smell it but he was pretty sure it was the vodka Chekov had given them all for Christmas, violently strong stuff with a label in cramped Russian handwriting that even Uhura couldn’t make out.

A girl of five or so, missing a bottom tooth, poked her head out the door.

“Uncle ‘Karu, come see the picture Carrie and me made for you!”

“Carrie and _I_ ,” corrected a voice from inside that Jim, never having met them and being an only child himself, nonetheless identified as an older sister.

The little girl turned her head to holler, “That’s what I _said_!”, giving Sulu a moment to visibly collect himself. He took a sip from his tumbler, glanced at it, and left it on the porch railing before he followed his niece inside.

“Did you know he refused Spock’s order to evacuate when the ship was going down?”

Jim leaned down to poke at the glass. His hand went through it. “Doesn’t surprise me in the least.”

Pike showed him Carol Marcus next. She was at home, but she wasn’t at rest any more than the others. There was a stack of old books next to her on the dining table, a computer open in front of her, and a data padd in her left hand. From the way she blinked and rubbed at her eyes, she’d been poring over all of it for some time now.

Jim moved closer to see what she was reading. The book on top of the stack was a history of the Eugenics Wars. Her padd was scrolling through what looked like a classified document. Jim should know, having hacked his way into more than a few. And as he watched, she pulled up a poor-quality image of Khan Noonien Singh on her computer screen.

“I wish I could help her,” he said as Carol took a swig of coffee from an oversized mug decorated with an artist’s rendition of Westminster Abbey. “Tell her that it wasn’t her fault.”

“She has to find her own way through this,” Pike replied. He gazed down at the power button on the computer as if he would very much like to switch it off. But he couldn’t touch it, of course, and anyway Jim figured Carol would just take the padd and books to bed with her.

He felt momentarily relieved when they appeared in a small, tastefully decorated bedroom. The Vulcan lute mounted on the wall clued him in before his eyes fell upon Spock and Uhura in bed. They, at least, were sleeping peacefully.

Then the part of his brain that was responsible for self-preservation (i.e. keeping his balls right where they belonged) caught up, and he took a horrified step back.

“Oh god, she is going to _kill_ me if she ever finds out I ghosted into their bedroom.”

“Bit late for that,” Pike said with a raised eyebrow.

Jim pulled a face at him. “Below the belt, sir.”

“Sorry,” he replied, sounding anything but, and nodded to the bed. “I realize Vulcans don’t require as much sleep as we do, but I think Spock might be pushing his limits.”

Jim was forced to reassess the scene. Uhura was sleeping, stretched out on her belly with one arm slung over Spock’s hips, but he was wide awake. There was a padd in his hand, its backlight turned down so low that Jim went cross-eyed just looking at the faint glow on Spock’s intent face. He moved around so he could see what Spock was staring at, leaning in close and imagining he could feel the desert heat rising from Spock’s skin.

It was a biobed read-out labeled KIRK, JAMES T.

Spock’s thumb swept across the screen to refresh the vitals, and while his expression didn’t change, Jim didn’t have to look down to know they weren’t good. He jumped back when Uhura’s slim hand passed across the screen to turn it off.

“Spock, please,” she said. Her voice lacked the scratchy tenor of someone just awakened.

Spock laid the padd on the nightstand where Jim’s hand was hovering. “I apologize, Nyota. I will attempt to sleep.”

She curled closer and his body shifted to accommodate her. “Will you think about that aid Leonard offered if you can’t?”

“I have already considered and dismissed it as unnecessary. Regardless, Dr. McCoy is hardly in a position to lecture anyone about wakefulness.”

Just like that, Jim was looking down at the top of Bones’ head. He was sitting by Jim’s biobed - a familiar sight, but not one he’d ever had the opportunity to view from this angle. His own face was drawn, and pale, and utterly still. Gazing down at himself, Jim experienced a sensation not unlike vertigo.

With a shudder, he turned to the man keeping vigil. Bones looked exhausted. His eyes were bloodshot and he was sporting several days’ worth of stubble. He seemed to have lost weight ( _that can’t be right. How long have I been out?_ ). Jim had seen Bones on deadlines and benders, and on the anniversary of his father’s death, and after the long procession of funerals they attended in the wake of the Narada attacks. But he’d never seen him look this broken.

Over his shoulder, Jim glimpsed two nurses outside the doorway. One whispered to the other, sounding urgent; the second nurse shook his head, and they moved on down the hall. Jim wanted to chase after them and make them drag Bones out, feed him a burger and throw him in a hot shower, even sedate him if they had to. Anything to get him away from this dim, sepulchral room.

The words _I’m sorry_ rose to Jim’s lips, but Bones beat him to it.

“I’m so sorry, Jim,” he whispered in a voice like chipped glass. Jim’s own throat worked convulsively ( _I’m not moving, why can’t I move_ ). Bones covered Jim’s hand ( _the corpse’s hand_ ) with his own and Jim’s fingers twitched, wanting to feel it.

“I’m sorry if what I did put you here, in this in-between place, because I know you wouldn’t want that.”

“I don’t,” Jim breathed, kneeling so close to Bones that he could make out each fine eyelash, putting the body on the bed behind him. Pike stood back, his hands folded in front of him.

Bones bit his bottom lip hard. “I was so angry with you for not calling me, but I get it now. You knew I wouldn’t be able to let go.” He turned Jim’s hand over, so gently, and stroked his wrist just below where the IV broke the skin.

“Still a dick move on your part, though.”

He choked out a laugh, and they were laughing together until all of of sudden Bones was weeping. He bent over the bed, pressing his lips to the long bones of Jim’s forearm. It would have been ticklish if Jim could feel it ( _godfuckingdamnit let him touch me let me wake up wake up WAKE UP_ ).

“Come back to me, darlin’,” Bones whispered against his skin.

Jim couldn’t stand it any longer. He made it through the doorway into the hospital room, but after that he figured what the hell and ran through walls and a couple of clueless people until he was outside. He was around back of the building, actually, and when he couldn’t manage to turn over a dumpster no matter how hard he kicked at the air, he gave up and whirled on Pike.

“Don’t you have some heavenly host to go micromanage, _Admiral_?” he snapped, clenching his fists. “Why did you bring me here?”

Pike just looked at him like he had on the night they met: a little amused, rather unimpressed, and completely immovable.

“If it was just to show me that I fuck up everything I touch, believe me, I got the message.”

“You’re missing the point, son,” said Pike in that kind yet steely way that sometimes made Jim want to punch him in the face. “As usual. But I still have faith that you’ll figure it out.”

At once the fight went out of him, leaving him feeling empty and drained.

“Chris -” he said, and stopped himself upon realizing that he’d never called Pike by his first name. In the back of his mind he’d always figured it was something that would come in time, when they had the freedom to become comrades and friends instead of this long-suffering mentor and hotheaded protege deal. But that time would never come, now.

Pike’s smile was warm as he put his hands on Jim’s shoulders. “Hey, that’s just one dead guy’s opinion. Up to you to make something out of it.” He kissed Jim’s brow, a gesture that would have made him uncomfortable if they were both living and breathing in the traditional sense.

Instead he only felt grateful for the chance to whisper “Goodbye” as Pike faded away.

Looking up at the sky, he called out, “There’s one more, right? This kind of thing always comes in threes.”

“I see you’re as clever as your reputation purports.”

Dark coalesced into light again and Jim was standing in a hallway with a man he’d never seen before. He was about sixty, with sandy hair beginning to lighten and a bit of padding around the middle. The red and black outfit he wore was obviously a uniform of some kind, though not one Jim was familiar with.

The man crossed his arms over his chest as he waited for Jim to figure him out. “Let me give you a hint. We’ve never met, but we _are_ related, albeit in a cosmic rather than a literal sense.”

They did a slow circuit around one another. Jim looked into friendly hazel eyes and saw a spark of - of recognition, or inspiration, or something.

“Me,” he said decisively. He would never be able to explain how he knew, but there it was. “You’re me from the future.”

The other Jim Kirk raised his pointer finger. “Well, from an alternate future, but that’s basically correct. Don’t ask me about the multiverse theory, it’s above my paygrade.” A broad grin took over his face, making him look a decade younger. “Nice to meet you, Captain Kirk.”

Jim met a firm grip that was an exact mirror of his own and shook his head slowly. He had consumed some questionable substances over the years, but all of those experiences were starting to look like nothing more than a sugar high.

“This is the weirdest fucking dream I’ve ever had.”

“Language, young man,” Kirk admonished.

Jim felt his spine straighten of its own accord. The guy had an air of command about him, no doubt about that. “Sorry, sir - er, Admiral?” It was a shot in the dark since he wore no insignia.

“Whether that’s wishful thinking on your part, it’s more or less true.” Kirk stepped aside to avoid a woman in a gray uniform that was similar enough to the current version to place her as an Academy instructor. But Jim had been in most of the campus buildings, and he didn’t recognized the style of this hallway or the lobby at its end.

“Oh, they built this place after the _Vengeance_ crashed,” Kirk explained as Jim looked around. “Or they _will_ build it, I suppose.” His brows drew together in an expression Spock or Bones or Uhura would instantly be able to identify. “My, this is confusing, isn’t it?”

Jim shrugged. “I’m actually starting to get used to it.”

“Well, we’d better get down to brass tacks,” Kirk said, drumming his knuckles against his thigh. “I’ve only got one thing to show you, and it’s this way.”

Jim followed him a short distance down the hall before they turned into a doorway and emerged in a spacious office. It was mostly furnished in Starfleet’s clean, plain lines, but there were personal touches here and there, including a elegant walnut desk and matching set of chairs.

Unlike his counterpart, he named the occupant of the desk right away. He was older, around Kirk’s age, but Jim would know that frown anywhere.

“Hey, Bones.”

The Leonard McCoy at the desk continued writing on his padd, a furrow of concentration bringing the lines on his face into sharp relief.

“I’m partial to my McCoy, naturally, but yours is still a handsome fellow,” said Kirk, fingering his own receding hairline.

He’d aged well, it was true, but Jim thought he looked weary and sad. After the scene in his hospital room, he would have hoped to see Bones in better spirits.

“What’s he doing here? He’s not made for early retirement, always says they’ll have to pull the laser scalpel from his cold dead hand.”

Kirk had wandered over to inspect a painting of a red barn on the far wall. “He still performs the odd surgery, but he took a teaching position after your miraculous recovery.”

Jim stared at him. “He resigned his commission?” It was like being told Spock had become the face of a major cosmetics corporation.

_And I went back into space without him?_

“Mm-hmm,” Kirk replied, stepping back to consider the painting from a distance. “Geoffrey M’Benga became your CMO in his stead. He’s very competent - managed to keep you alive, and we both know that’s no easy task.”

“I know the prospect of a five-year mission was tough on him, but I never - I always figured he would become an admiral one day. That we’d retire together.”

“Not much chance of that with scarcely a year’s experience on a starship, though you received your promotion right on schedule.”

Jim walked around the desk for a better view of the holos lined up on the edge. He recognized the Joanna he knew as well as the woman she’d grown into, and two dark-haired children with that stubborn McCoy chin. He couldn’t help but smile to see them even as he noted the absence of anyone else. Bones’ office in Enterprise’s sickbay had a large framed picture of the bridge crew from their epic winter holiday bash. It was objectively terrible - Uhura was blinking, Sulu was about to spill his beer down Chekov’s shirt, and their illustrious captain was making a somewhat obscene gesture - but Jim had passed copies around as well as hanging it in his own ready room. There was also a holo from when he and Bones went hiking along the Pacific Coast Trail in their second year at the Academy, and one from the 30th birthday party Jim and Eleanor McCoy had sworn up and down they weren’t going to throw.

“He’s a good teacher, but he missed out on a whole career of groundbreaking research,” Kirk said, coming up beside Jim. “Among other things.”

Jim started at the sound of the door chime.

“Open up,” Bones ordered.

Nyota Uhura entered the office, her hair cut short and streaked with white, her hips rounder, and still one of the most beautiful women Jim had ever seen. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Kirk straightening the cuffs on his shirt.

At last Bones cracked a smile. “Nyota, so good to see you.” He stepped around to kiss her cheek and pull out a chair for her.

Jim pursed his lips. Bones and Uhura had gotten pretty close in the last year (and ganged up on him more often than he liked to admit). While there was clearly affection between them now, she sat on the edge of her chair and he was fiddling with a stylus. They talked about kids at first - Bones’ grandkids, Spock and Nyota’s teenage son (a concept he fully supported in theory but was having a hell of a time wrapping his brain around). It was perfectly polite, and perfectly banal.

“It’s like they don’t even remember the time they faced off in strip poker for three solid hours,” he said.

Kirk shot him a sidelong glance. “Why couldn’t that have happened on my _Enterprise_?” Jim had the distinct impression that his middle-aged alternate reality self was flirting, but he chose not to dwell on it for the sake of sanity.

“There’s still no word,” Uhura was saying. Her voice had dropped slightly and she looked troubled.

Bones didn’t respond. Instead he reached into a drawer, withdrew a bottle of bottle of Woodford Reserve, and poured them each a double. Uhura took what appeared to be a restorative sip before she continued.

“Spock is trying everything he can think of. Scotty and Chekov blame themselves, though of course no one else does.”

“The legendary James T. Kirk,” Bones said heavily, his eyes on the bourbon swirling in his glass. “Doesn’t seem right that he should just...disappear into the aether.”

Jim turned to Kirk. “What are they talking about?”

“There was a space-time anomaly,” he replied without taking his eyes from Bones and Uhura. His wistful expression made Jim feel like an interloper despite the fact that this was his timeline. “It happened a little differently than in my reality, but the end result was the same. You’ve gone missing and been presumed dead. Starfleet will be making it official any day now.”

“Damn them all to hell,” Bones said with sudden vehemence. He knocked back the rest of his drink and slammed the glass down. “God, I wish I had…”

“I know, Leonard.” Uhura reached across the desk to lay her hand over his. “ _He_ knew.”

Bones turned his face away from her, covering his mouth with his free hand. Jim had moved closer to him without realizing it.

“Are you - am I really dead?”

Kirk’s gaze was direct and Jim refused to flinch from it. “To them you are. They’ll never see you again, and they won’t even have a body to put to rest.”

“That is some _bullshit_ ,” Jim ground out between his teeth. Kirk didn’t chide him about his language this time.

They watched as Uhura bid Bones a subdued goodbye. The wall that had fallen when they discussed their former captain’s fate was back up, and Jim had the feeling this was the last time they’d be seeing each other for awhile. It twisted something deep inside him to witness his friends so distant from one another, never mind the rift between himself and Bones that was destined never to be healed.

“But it’s not destiny,” he said out loud.

Kirk was studying the holos of Bones’ grandchildren with that same pensive expression. “Oh?”

“This,” Jim said, waving his hand over the desk. Bones had gone back to grading papers on his padd. “Everything my dad and Pike showed me had already happened or was happening. The future’s not set in stone - hell, this isn’t even _your_ future, or past, or whatever. That’s why you’re here for me now, isn’t it?”

Kirk’s smile was a little sad. “Like I said, top of the class.”

Jim knew better than to press for specific details; the Spock from Kirk’s time had always been extremely reluctant to divulge any. Of course there was still the probability that this was all happening inside his head, but since accepting that premise meant going back to his persistent vegetative state, he preferred to reject it. In any case, he still had one question to ask.

“What would you have done differently?”

Kirk glanced back over his shoulder at the barn painting. “I don’t regret my life’s work, Jim. But I always wondered if I could have had...something more.”

“I’m going to wake up,” Jim said, watching Bones set the glasses in the drawer. The faint tremor in his hand made them clink together.

Kirk clapped a hand on his back. It was surprisingly bracing coming from an older guy. “When you do, make it count. Oh, and Jim - will you tell Spock something for me? My Spock, not yours,” he amended wryly.

“Of course.”

Kirk swallowed hard, his eyes falling on Bones hunched over his work. “ _Dungau-sarlah etek_ , when the time is right.”

Jim would be the first person to admit that his Vulcan wasn’t flawless (or rather the third person after Uhura and Spock). It took him a few seconds to translate the phrase, by which point Kirk was gone.

Jim was alone.

And then he wasn’t.

 

 

Everyone knew that Dr. McCoy had eyes all over the medical center. Though he wasn’t on shift when Jim finally managed to make a break for it, Jim gave himself a twenty-minute window. Bones made it in fourteen.

“Just what in hell do you think you’re doing, Jim? You’re barely a week out of medically induced coma - which, might I remind you, is code for 'mostly dead' - and you’re supposed to be under twenty-four-hour surveillance!”

“Don’t blame that poor little Deltan nurse. I can be very sneaky when it’s called for. And besides -” Jim waved his cane. “I used this ridiculous thing the whole way.” He’d needed it too, not that he was willing to admit that to Bones. He was in enough trouble as it was.

Bones stood with hands on his hips, eyes blazing. It was clear that Jim’s delicate state was the only thing keeping him from administering a good hard shake. “It’s chilly and damp out here. I really don’t want to deal with an upper respiratory infection on top of everything else.”

“I thought that was one of those medical myths you’re always going on about.”

“Of course you can’t catch a cold from bad weather, but your immune system is already in the shithouse and the goddamned bay breeze is not going to help it,” Bones snapped.

Jim fixed a meek expression on his face and patted the bench beside him. “I need to gather my strength before I go back in. Come sit with me for a minute.”

“What strength?” Bones demanded. “You’ve got the lung capacity of a newborn dwarf hamster right now.”

But he sat down anyway, his breath coming quick and short. He was one to talk about lung capacity, Jim thought, and then felt guilty because he was the one who had sent Bones on a panic-run through the hospital in the first place. At least he had a good reason for it. The memories were getting hazier day by day; he needed to get this out before he lost his resolve, and he needed to get out of the stale recycled air to do it.

He let Bones run a tricorder over him, satisfying himself that Jim was no worse the wear for his escape attempt. Then he tugged it away and set it aside.

“Hey, you can’t -”

“Shush,” Jim said. He caught Bones’ grasping hand and pointed it up to the sky. “Look, you can see the _Argo_ constellations.”

“Can’t see anything in this fog,” Bones grumbled, and he had a point. But Jim knew where the stars were anyway.

“There’s _Carina_ , the ship’s keel.” Jim traced its shape, Bones’ fingers relaxing against his own. “ _Vela_ is the sail. _Pyxis_ \- the compass. And that’s _Puppis_ , the poop deck.” He leaned his head on Bones’ shoulder. “Heh. Poop.”

“You are perpetually twelve,” said Bones.

Jim brought their folded hands down to rest on Bones’ knee. “They’re our stars, Bones. Our stories. But there are so many other stories out there for us to learn.”

“There are.” Bones cleared his throat. “Does this have anything to do with why you won’t turn my hand loose?” His voice was deceptively calm.

Jim brought his other hand up to push his fingers into Bones’ thick hair. There was a sudden, sharp vision of gray at his temples before it faded away completely.

“I want us to write our own story, Bones,” Jim said. “Just you and me.” He kissed him softly before pulling back.

Bones had starlight in his eyes. “You and me,” he echoed, and drew Jim close to kiss him, and kiss him, and kiss him again.

 

**Author's Note:**

>  _Dungau-sarlah etek_ : We shall come. I translated it from the [Vulcan Language Dictionary](http://www.starbase-10.de/vld/) and all mistakes are my own. Also, I'm not entirely certain that those constellations would actually be visible from San Francisco, but let's call it artistic license because I liked the ship imagery.


End file.
